‘Better Care Together Strategy’
Cumbria and Lancashire North Clinical Commissioning Groups and the University
Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Trust have submitted their "Better Care Together
Strategy" to NHS England. The Strategy contains proposals for the future provision
of health and care services across Morecambe Bay.
The broad direction of travel has been shared at a number of major engagement
events with patient, public, stakeholders and clinicians in recent months.
Clinicians including GPs, nurses, hospital surgeons and physicians and social care
practitioners have spent the last 18 months working on new "models of care" which
will help cut through red tape to make sure all patients get the right care in the
right place at the right time. The majority of proposed changes are about the way
that primary, community and social care services work together to provide the
best possible care for patients. Wherever possible this will be within their local
community or neighbourhood. It is therefore proposed to make a significant short
term investment in primary and community care across Morecambe Bay in order to
reduce both the need for any unneeded hospital stays and any unnecessarily long
stays in hospital. This will improve quality of care and convenience for patients,
particularly for the elderly and people with young children, who often prefer to
recover at home, as well as being far more cost effective for the NHS pound in the
medium and long term.
There are no proposals to close or privatise any of the three hospitals at Barrow in
Furness, Lancaster or Kendal.
The “Better Care Together Strategy” proposes that core services including
maternity will be retained on all three hospital sites and A&E services at Furness
and Lancaster.
The only proposal in the Better Care Together Strategy” that directly relates to
hospital services is for elective surgery (non urgent care e.g. planned surgery) to
move to fewer sites which will drive up quality standards, reduce costs and make it
easier to employ and retain the specialist permanent staff needed to provide the
best possible health results for patients.
After allowing a few weeks for some initial feedback from a number of assurance
and partner organisations, including NHS England and Monitor, we intend to
provide further details about the proposals later in July. We will also be carrying
out further engagement with our staff, members of the public, local MPs and
elected members over the coming months.
We can confirm that no decisions have been made at this point in time, and
any major proposals for changes to health services would be subject to a formal
public consultation, the details of which would be agreed with the Joint Overview
and Scrutiny Committee for Cumbria and Lancashire.